Excerpt from The Traveller's Guide to Dining:

The Rat in the Pot, Ald'ruhn - (Rating: 1 Gold)

Lirielle Stoine is the proprietress of this public house, which is a gathering place for local workmen, commoners, and traders. It is also reputed to be one of the headquarters of the Thieves Guild, so keep an eye on your purse if you chance a visit. The menu is small, comprising a few rat-based dishes plus local brews by the glass or bottle. The Potted Rat dish is recommended and the Sweet Ash Yam Pie is one of the better variations of this local, highly popular dessert. A friendly waitress on staff is happy to explain the menu and serve your food while you relax at one of the many tables either upstairs or downstairs and share the local gossip.

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=8448 ... Version 1.2 (18 May 2010)

Features:
- A unique menu
- The ability to buy the foods and drinks on the menu
- A waitress with extensive dialogue
- Dialogue that may vary depending on PC race, gender, affiliation(s), and disposition
- Some amusing little characters
- Works with LGNPC

A Word about Dialogue:
- The following topics have some depth. That is, you may see a different response each time you click on one.
latest rumors
little advice
little secret
specific place
someone in particular
- A few responses may vary depending on the order in which you do certain things.
- A few topics require an action to trigger them.
- Note that any detailed responses that the waitress gives are recorded in the journal under the appropriate topic.

Oddities:
- The meals are implemented as blue pots (since I have no modelling skill). The justification is that they're in convenient containers for carrying around.
- The meals are alchemy objects so that they can give effects when eaten. Unfortunately, this means that they make bubbling sounds.

Choosing .esp Files:

Both a graphical (gMenu) and a text (tMenu) version of the menu are provided. The text menu is mainly for those who wish to translate the menu into another language. Both menus have the same content.

The TGD01_TheRatInThePot_iSupport.esp file contains all other content. "iSupport" means independent support. It includes only additions to the game. No existing game items, dialogue, or scripts were changed. This is the file most likely to have conflict problems, though I detected none when I tried it in my heavily modded game.

The reason that I did not make only two .esp files (one with the text menu plus all other content and one with the graphical menu plus all other content) is that this would duplicate 99% of the content and be a maintenance headache. With this modular approach you can choose to use either just the menu you like (especially if you run into conflicts with the content), or both the menu and the content, or the content only.

Enable -EITHER-
TGD01_TheRatInThePot_gMenu.esp
-OR-
TGD01_TheRatInThePot_tMenu.esp
to have the menu placed in the game.

Enable TGD01_TheRatInThePot_iSupport.esp to get the waitress and all other
content.

Extras:
- A paper version of the menu. (So you can see the entire thing at once.)
- A blackboard version of the menu. (I didn't use it, but I thought it looked cool.)
- A How To Guide. (In case you're interested in how I did some stuff.)

Feedback Please! This is my 3rd mod. Help me make my mods better. Tell me what works and what doesn't. Comments, advice, and constructive criticism are always welcome.

Call For Artists I currently have neither skill nor talent for either modelling or texturing. If there are any artists who have the time and inclination to create some food models, I made it easy for you. All the food and drink meshes are in Data Files\Meshes\Debi. Currently they're just copies of Bethesda models. This should make it easy to plug in meshes and textures on top of my mod.

I have had a good look at this in-game and in the editor. It is very well designed and executed, and compliments LGNPC Ald'ruhn quite nicely - for anyone concerned about that.

Congratulations on a most welcome enhancement to our tavern experience.

I think I'll take a look at this, sounds promising.

Revision 1.1 is in the works. I'll be collecting comments for a while, so please let me know what you think.

Does it have a stool or chair that the player can sit in? Just for added effect, if it does, does the waitress come to the player?

Ah, no. I know of at least one mod that has sitting NPCs, done somehow with pants, but I don't know of any way to make the player sit down. I wonder if it would be possible for a script to make the waitress find the player? Of course, then she'd probably end up following you everywhere and getting in your way.

This sounds interesting, I'll try it out later tonight.

For allowing the player to sit down, you might want to take a look at http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=8423. It adds stools to taverns on which the player can sit down.

Sarutobi - Thanks for the pointer. I've never seen that mod before.

Ah ha! good to see your idea is moving along Debi.

I will support this as I have the others, and I am eager to try it out. Your mod sounds well put together so that anyways helps. That said though, I may wait for the revision before I do try it, simply because the longer I wait the better chances I have of running mods smoothly. I should be getting a new computer in june, and the one I am on has been having CPU load issues lately.

Good luck with updating, and if need any feedback on ideas and the like, I am more than happy to help. I'll be sure to shoot you a PM on what I thought about this mod when I can use it to make up for the lack of feedback this time around. Cheers and happy modding! :foodndrink:

Have to find it, but there is a great Solstheim cabin mod that comes with a bowl of stew. There are also a few mods with victuals that are exceptional, like Pearl Palace, Liligue, and others. Oh, and if anyone can name that one off hand with the steaming mug of cider, that entire setup is fabulous.

Can't wait to add your mod. Anything that adds extensive dialogues and tavern fun is the stuff of dreams.

I've just uploaded v1.1 to PES.

Maholix - It's OK to upload now. I'm not planning any more revs in the near future unless someone finds a glaring problem. Thank you for your support!

cyranO - Many thanks for all of your detailed comments. I've made changes based on most of them. I'm holding off on changing the alchemy food objects to some other type of object until after I've had a chance to play with NoM and think about the ramifications some more.

Happy Gaming everyone!

Okay, noted. Before I dl this though, I need something cleared up. What's the difference between the graphic and text menus? Maybe it's just because I didn't sleep well, but it's not making sense to me. You say the text is to mod the list into another language but how does it do that? Is it like a note that converts into the user's language or something?

Once I understand that better, I'll go and dl the mod right away.

The text menu is a scroll object with simple text entered in the Book Text field of the Book / Scroll object using the standard Bethesda method and the Magic Cards font. Someone who wants to convert the menu to another language can load the text menu into TES CS and simply change the text.

The graphical menu is a graphics object make with Gimp (using a typeface that I found on the web) and stored in a .tga file. The Book Text field of the scroll contains only an image reference to the graphics file, so it can't be easily changed into another language.

I just tried it out and have to say I really like it. Especially that the waitress can give you information about all the meals.

One minor issue though, I have a problem with the icon for Potted Rat (No Hackle-Lo) not being found.
I looked in my Data Files and the file for the icon is there, so I guess it's not being pointed at correctly.

OOPS! Looks like a rename problem. Find Data Files\Icons\Debi\djd_icPottedRatNoHackle.tga and change it to djd_icPottedRatNoHack.tga.

There's a limit of 32 characters imposed by the CS and I think I forgot to copy the change over to my repository. I'll fix it in the next rev.

Thanks for reporting that, Sarutobi! Sorry for the inconvenience.

Problem fixed. Version 1.2 uploaded.

Whoohoo! I've always wanted to see something like this. Glad you've shared it with the rest of us, I can't wait to poke around in it!

You could do an AiFollow player 0 0 0, but then you'd have to put the waitress back into wander mode afterwards. If you want the waitress to talk to the player, just use a ForceGreeting when the player comes into the cell. If you go that route, I'd wait about 4 seconds before I greeted the player to give them time to get in and get situated.

Thanks for the info, Jac. I've been kind of mulling the concept over in the back of my mind as I think it would be kinda nifty. I may copy the sitting pants / stool concept and do what you're suggesting. And if the player hangs around for a while maybe I could have the waitress wander back every once in a while and ask if she can get you anything else.

:banghead: I've run into that 32-character issue too. Bethesda did as well - check in the Meshes/a folder on the CS disc, and you'll see duplicates of the imperial chain armor set, one with shorter names than the other. Haw!

If you do a force greet, it would be neat if it only went off after you sit down in the chair. That way if another mod adds quests or you just want to look around you still can.